Top of the line and custom pens and mechanical pencils have a wooden cylindrical body which surrounds an ink cartridge or lead compartment. These cylindrical bodies are traditionally produced using a lathe, whereby a wood blank is spun adjacent a cutting edge. By moving the cutting edge against the spinning blank, it is possible to produce a cylindrical wooden tube which may be polished and used as a pen/pencil body.
However, using a lathe to cut such pen/pencil bodies has distinct disadvantages. First, not every hobbyist has a access to a lathe in their personal workshop because lathes tend to be large, expensive pieces of equipment. Second, turning wood on a lathe is not an easy skill to master and a novice or hobbyist may experience a variety of problems.
For example, when the wood blank is spinning, the cutting edge can catch on the wood and cause a piece of the wood to chip off. Since the end result is a top of the line or custom pen, it is unacceptable to have any chips what-so-ever in the final product. Further, since exotic woods are often used to make the pen/pencil body, chipping of the wood is more problematic because the wood itself is often expensive. Also, it may be difficult for a novice or hobbyist to turn the wood so that the diameter of the cylinder to be formed is constant.
Although these problems may be overcome with practice and may not cause significant problems for a master woodworker, a novice or a person who enjoys working with wood in their home workshop may find that these difficulties often pose serious obstacles to producing professional-looking results.